Wellington - New Zealand's foreign minister on Tuesday compared Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's administration to the genocidal regime of Cambodia's Pol Pot.
Phil Goff made the remarks while pushing for his country's cricket team to call off a planned tour of the southern African nation.
Goff, campaigning to stop New Zealand's Black Caps cricket team from touring Zimbabwe in August, said the International Cricket Council should not ignore the "massive human rights abuses" in Zimbabwe.
....
"You can't simply play a game of cricket and ignore those things happening around you," Goff said on National Radio.
No you can't. I'm sure that this will finally cow the old monster Mugabe and convince him of the error of his ways.
Goff plans to write to the ICC, recommending that obligations on sports teams to tour should be waived in the event of a severe human rights crisis.
....
He said the ICC is "dominated" by nations that seem unprepared to take a stand on the issue, "whether you're talking South Africa and Zimbabwe, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc".
"How can you move ahead when the African countries are prepared to tolerate such outrageous behaviour from one of their own? They need to do a lot of soul searching," he said.
That's right, mate. Soul searching will get it done. At least his heart is in the right place even if his sense of proportion is totally bonkers.
Read it here.
No comments:
Post a Comment